• Journal of Families and Better Life
• /
• v.32 no.5
• /
• pp.31-40
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate low- and middle-income preschoolers' use of contextualized and decontextualized talk. The contextualized and decontextualized talk of 70 five-year-old children were analyzed by children's gender and their socioeconomic status. The participants, as dyads, participated in a peer play session for 10 minutes. The play sessions were videotaped and the videotaped data were transcribed. Each transcript was analyzed according to the modified version of Curenton et al. (2008)'s coding schemes. The results showed that children from middle-income families engaged more in both contextualized and decontextualized talk than children from low-income families. Also, girls from middle-income families engaged in more contextualized-decontextualized talk(psychological states) than girls from low-income families.